Busy watching bees in her back yard

Advance photo/Hilton FloresLeslie Meurer, office manager at the Greenbelt Nature Center, photographs a bee as it lands on one of the sunflowers outside her Dongan Hills home. "I am amazed that there are so many different bees. Also, I wasn't aware that native bees make nests in the ground. Now I see them in my own yard," Ms. Meurer said.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- DONGAN HILLS -- Taking one's work home, in whatever form, is best avoided. However, Lesley Meurer has been happily taking her work home; she just wonders what the neighbors think.

Once a week during the growing season, Ms. Meurer sits in her Dongan Hills back yard and, in a variation of watching the grass grow, stares at a flower for 30 minutes waiting for bees to land on it. She writes notes and sometimes takes a photo.

Technically, she is off the clock. Bee watching is not a paid part of her job, but it is a pet project of her boss.

Ms. Meurer is the office manager of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, a unique place where the staff propagates seeds that they have collected from indigenous plants, trees and bushes.

A Parks Department facility, it is not open to the public. The plants grown there are used for city restoration and replanting projects.

In addition to the usual duties of an office manager -- receptionist, bookkeeper, secretary to the director and nursery manager -- Ms. Meurer has hands-on knowledge of the operation, from gathering the seeds (including a canoe trip to Shooters Island) to separating, cleaning and planting them.

In her third year of counting bees, Ms. Meurer demonstrated her routine with some woodland sunflowers, Helianthus decapetalus. She gets set with chair, paper to note -- date, time, weather, bees and other flying insects -- camera, and phone with timer.

Although only four bees are being identified, in the beginning it was a little overwhelming trying to recognize them.

Since they move off quickly, Ms. Meurer often photographs each beeso she can make sure of its identification online, something people can do in the library.

BEE-WATCHERS ARE BORN

She was in the perfect place when the Bee Watcher program was launched. Participating in the study has heightened her observation skills.

"I am amazed that there are so many different bees. Also, I wasn't aware that native bees make nests in the ground. Now, I see them in my own yard," Ms. Meurer said.

Edward Toth, director of the Native Plant Center, developed the Bee Watchers program in conjunction with Liz Johnson of the American Museum of Natural History and Kevin Matteson, a post-doctoral teaching fellow in the biology department at Fordham University.

Bees are everywhere which made the study a perfect candidate for a citizen science project. City residents make observations in back yards and gardens and collect data on the number and type of bees and the native flowers to which they are drawn. The data is collected and mapped.

The collapse of honey bee colonies has raised awareness of the role of bees in food production. Not a lot is known about the health of native bees --there are 4,000 species in the country, 225 in New York. Most of them, unlike the honey and bumble bee, are solitary in nature.

Among pollinators, which include flies, beetles, butterflies, bats and birds, bees are the most effective at moving pollen between the male and female parts of a plant and facilitating the production of fruit, vegetables and wildflowers.

Toth's role at the Native Plant Center and his training as an entomologist are a perfect fit for the "if you plant it they will come" project.

Six plants were chosen to standardize the study -- wild bergamot (lavender bee balm), common milkweed, smooth aster, woodland sunflower, rough-leaved goldenrod and mountain mint. They are being distributed to participants through the Native Plant Center.

A lemon queen sunflower is also included to connect the program to a national study, the Great Sunflower Project.